The GAYA governance model ensures fair and decentralized decision-making by leveraging a staking-based system.

1. Minimum Stake for Voting: Users must stake 10,000 GayaCoins to participate in governance, ensuring only invested participants influence decisions.

2. Proposal Submission Threshold: Proposals require at least 50,000 GayaCoins staked to be eligible for community voting.

3. Voting Formula: GAYA uses Quadratic Voting to balance influence: Voting Power = (Tokens Staked)1/2 This prevents large holders from disproportionately affecting decisions. Example:

• User A stakes 10,000 GayaCoins: Voting Power = 10,000 ½ = 100

• User B stakes 40,000 GayaCoins: Voting Power = 40,000½ = 200

This governance structure ensures meaningful participation while avoiding dominance by any single entity.

GAYA’s Governance Model

GAYA’s governance model is community-driven, empowering GayaCoin holders to shape the platform’s future through a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO). By staking GayaCoin, users gain the right to propose and vote on platform decisions, fostering transparency, decentralization, and alignment with the community’s vision.

To promote fair and balanced representation within the DAO, GAYA incorporates advanced voting mechanisms, including quadratic voting and reputation-based voting. These methods work together to mitigate the concentration of power and ensure that committed, active participants have a meaningful influence on governance.

• Quadratic Voting: In GAYA’s DAO, quadratic voting is applied to prevent large stakeholders from exerting disproportionate control. With this system, the cost of each additional vote increases, requiring stakeholders to weigh the importance of their votes carefully. As a result, quadratic voting discourages overconcentration of voting power by making it costly for large holders to acquire excessive influence, enabling a more balanced representation of interests across the community.

• Reputation-Based Voting: GAYA’s reputation-based voting system allocates voting power based not only on the amount staked but also on a user’s participation history, staking duration, and contributions to community initiatives. This reputation-based approach ensures that active, long-term participants who contribute constructively to the ecosystem hold a stronger voice in governance. By rewarding sustained engagement, GAYA encourages responsible governance and enhances accountability.

GAYA’s DAO framework enables GayaCoin stakers to participate in governance by submitting proposals, voting on key platform initiatives, and influencing critical decisions. The governance structure is designed with multiple tiers to balance influence and ensure that all stakers, regardless of their stake size, can contribute meaningfully to the platform’s direction.

Governance Tiers

1. General Stakeholders: All GayaCoin stakers are granted voting privileges on general proposals. This tier ensures that every participant in the network has a voice in governance, fostering an inclusive decision-making environment.

2. Delegated Voting Power: Stakers with larger holdings or those who choose to delegate their voting rights participate in more significant issues, such as treasury allocations, partnership proposals, and major upgrades. This delegated structure balances influence, allowing higher-stake members to contribute meaningfully without dominating the governance process.

3. Core Contributors: Core contributors are dedicated members with proven expertise and a consistent engagement history. They participate in specialized committees to provide insights into complex and strategic decisions. This group’s involvement is critical in guiding platform evolution, as they bring specialized knowledge to the decision-making process.

Staking Mechanism Staking GayaCoin is essential for governance participation. By staking, users lock up their tokens in the network, which grants them voting rights and aligns their interests with the platform’s success. The amount of voting power a user possesses is proportional to the amount of GayaCoin staked, creating a direct link between a participant’s level of investment in the platform and their influence in governance decisions. This staking model ensures that those who are invested in the platform’s growth and stability have a meaningful role in its direction.

Governance Rewards To incentivize active and long-term participation, GAYA rewards stakers in GayaCoin. These rewards are distributed based on staking duration, with higher rewards for those who commit their tokens for longer periods. This structure encourages sustained involvement in governance, contributing to GAYA’s economic stability and creating an ecosystem where user and platform interests are aligned over the long term.

GAYA’s DAO framework follows a multi-stage proposal process to ensure that all ideas are thoroughly vetted and aligned with the platform’s goals:

1. Community Review: New proposals first undergo a community review phase, where initial feedback helps refine and optimize the proposal. This early stage promotes collaboration, allowing the community to shape ideas before formal voting begins.

2. Preliminary Vote: After community review, proposals enter a preliminary voting phase. This initial vote serves as a filter, prioritizing high-impact ideas and filtering out lower-priority items. Only proposals that receive adequate preliminary support move forward, ensuring that the community’s time and resources are focused on the most valuable initiatives.

3. Final Vote: Proposals that pass the preliminary vote proceed to a final vote by the DAO. At this stage, GayaCoin stakers cast their votes, determining whether the proposal will be adopted. This multi-step process ensures that only well-considered ideas with broad support reach implementation.

1. Decentralized Decision-Making: GAYA’s DAO framework fosters transparent, community-led control over platform changes. This decentralization ensures that the platform evolves in a way that aligns with the community’s collective vision, rather than relying on centralized authority.

2. Incentivized Engagement: By staking GayaCoin, participants earn rewards proportional to their commitment, aligning user incentives with GAYA’s growth and promoting long-term engagement. This reward structure encourages active involvement and supports the platform’s economic stability.

3. Fair Representation: Through quadratic and reputation-based voting, GAYA’s governance model prevents large holders from dominating decision-making. This balanced approach enables a broader range of stakeholders to participate, fostering a more inclusive and equitable governance system.

4. Sustainable, Community-Driven Future: GAYA’s DAO framework ensures that all GayaCoin holders can actively shape the platform, contributing to a sustainable ecosystem where user-driven governance is central. By combining staking-based governance with advanced voting mechanisms, GAYA empowers its community while maintaining the platform’s long-term viability and alignment with user values.

Through its DAO framework, GAYA balances decentralized decision-making with responsible governance, empowering users to take an active role in the ecosystem’s future. This community-centered approach supports a transparent, democratic platform that aligns with GAYA’s mission of fostering a sustainable, user-driven digital economy.

While GAYA’s governance model emphasizes decentralization, certain core decisions, particularly those concerning platform security, regulatory compliance, and protocol stability, are safeguarded by additional oversight. These measures protect the platform’s foundational elements and ensure long-term stability, while still respecting the community’s role in shaping non-critical aspects of the ecosystem.